Video Marketing Growth for 2018

According to YouAppi’s Second Annual CMO Mobile Marketing Guide Survey, 85% of Marketers Plan to Increase Investment in Video in 2018, up from 75%.

Review the PDF of the entire guide for many more brand new statistics related to the growth of video marketing. Highlights include these insights:

Increases across all 5 channels are up in 2018;

Over 75% of respondents said video was very or critically important to the customer journey;

Video priorities have changed from 2017 to 2018;

There are two top concerns for video advertising;

Reengagement difficulties doubled year-over-year; and

Some cutting edge technologies may be priorities over others.

Branded videos are engaging and informative, and can do wonders for your business. If executed correctly, videos can dramatically enhance your digital marketing strategy.

With a bit of clever video magic, you can stand out from the influx of videos published every day.

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Still, it’s a particularly challenging medium because viewers have little freedom in terms of how they consume it.

Unlike content, there’s no real way to skim it — jumping forward causes the viewer to feel like they’ve missed something important, yet watching a video in its entirety just to get to the useful bit feels like an awful waste of time.

Video Marketing Best Practices

Although video is a different medium, you should still follow content marketing best practices:

Grab their attention immediately! Do not make the mistake many videographers do of having a long, drawn-out introduction on your videos.

Provide highly useful information. When they understand that your video content is useful, this creates trust between you and your visitors. One bad video could deter them from ever watching another video from you again.

Tell a story. Viewers expect to follow a narrative when consuming video content.

Keep it simple. Your video shouldn’t feel like a research paper or operations manual. The who, what, where, why and when of a video should become clear early on.

How to Increase Profits With Video Marketing

The effectiveness of video marketing also makes it a highly competitive area on the web. To stand out from the crowd, it’s imperative you take a unique approach to your video strategy.

Take Viewers Behind the Scenes (BTS)

There’s no better way to humanize a brand than by taking viewers behind the scenes (BTS). However, it’s just as easy to botch a behind-the-scenes clip as it is to get it right.

This is because BTS videos can easily start to feel mundane if they don’t take an interesting angle or have something unique to show.

This is where your brand personality can truly shine, offering a glimpse into your world. Use it to show your team’s dedication to the craft, and make your viewers interested in learning more.

To help get you started, take a look at some existing behind the scenes videos. Your research doesn’t have to focus exclusively on brands.

Example Behind-the-scenes Videos

This Vimeo blog post focuses on behind-the-scenes tips for movie makers, and the suggestions are still relevant to any video content you create.

The nuts and bolts — tell your story, explain why you’re here, what the viewer is seeing, etc. — are all the same.

Take advantage of a drone’s powerful technical prowess to create stunning imagery. Large offices, events and demonstrations could benefit from aerial footage.

However, as stated by DroneBase.com, there are a handful of FAA rules accompanying drone coverage, and it’s important you read up on them before you put out any content.

Here are a few BTS ideas:

Show off your inception skills. Film your team shooting a commercial or marketing video, and detail what goes into making a video for the public. This is similar to what radio producer Alex Blumberg did with his podcast Startup. He gave listeners real-time updates into the trials and tribulations of starting up a podcast business.

Put your company culture on full display. If culture is your strong suit, let it shine. Show your employees during a team-building exercise or work event.

Feature your progress. If your business is going through any changes, like a major office renovation or new product version, update your audience and use videos to take them on the journey with you.

Edit your events in mini feature films. Events take quite a while to plan. A well-shot, edited mini-feature film can help you show off your event AND provide a glimpse into what goes into making an event happen.

Use Influencer Marketing

The power of influence is phenomenal. One Nielson study found that 92% of consumers trust opinions from people they know, both directly and indirectly. Celebrity influence is a great example of how this works.

Though the majority of people have never met Tony Robbins, if he endorses a product on any of his social channels, those product sales are likely to skyrocket.

Many studies have shown just how effective influencer marketing can be, and this is because the consumers of today trust the opinions of those they follow.

The company teamed up with a handful of YouTube bloggers across different industries and commissioned them to post how-tos that were most relevant to their channels.

They also discovered it was a unique way to circumvent ad blockers. This video shows that 46% of consumers use some form of ad blocking on a daily basis:

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It was a win-win situation; video bloggers were able to post useful content, and Lynda.com received more unique visits.

Influencer Marketing for B2Bs

Another way to work with an influencer is to interview them. Let them test out your product or service, and broadcast a conversation that shows how they’re using and benefiting from it.

Not only can you turn these into fun videos for social media, but you can also use these as testimonials on your site.

Lastly, influencer marketing can help boost your SEO. When people are talking about and linking to your brand, it results in organic reach.

These SEO improvements are a byproduct of your video marketing that stick around long after the video is published.

Customer Service and Explainer Videos

Brands have ample opportunity to use customer service and explainer videos to their advantage. In fact, this is an untapped area of potential for many businesses, especially those in the tech industry.

Think about all the instances you’ve had to Google how to operate a certain product. Let’s say you’re trying to figure out how to work an Apple TV.

You’d search for the phrase “how to turn on an Apple TV” and would see several videos appear in search results — mostly from YouTubers and tech aficionados. These videos have huge branding potential.

Not only would you be able to provide your customers and potential leads with valuable, straight-from-the-source information, but you’d be able to promote other products or services, too.

Here are some tips for using explainer videos in your video marketing strategy:

Start by repurposing some of your most frequently asked questions as explainer videos.

Don’t be afraid to show your staff and let them have fun with it. A little humility goes a long way. You may not realize it, but seeing brand representatives fix common issues helps humanize the brand.

Write a rough script that each of your explainer videos will follow. This creates a cohesive string of branded videos that your customers will come to learn, and this format will eventually become synonymous with your marketing videos.

Consider taking the Lynda.com approach to combining influencer outreach with explainer videos. For example, maybe you could partner with the tech YouTuber who showed your customers how to successfully use your product.

At the end of the day, video marketing isn’t about being a salesman. Remember, you have a limited amount of time to engage your audience, and this isn’t the place for it.

Where to Share Your Videos

It isn’t enough to just have your videos on YouTube or your own site. Know what platforms to share your videos on natively, as well.

LinkedIn recently rolled out native video, but this doesn’t mean you should post any type of content onto its platform.

While professional explainer videos might be relevant, funny BTS videos would be better suited for Facebook.

The key is to be engaging. Hook them during the first 10 seconds, and maintain the momentum throughout the video.

Gail Gardner is the Small Business Marketing Strategist who founded GrowMap.com and co-founded the Blogger Mastermind Skype group. She mentors small businesses and freelancers, especially writers and social media marketing managers.

7 Reactions

Video is a great way to introduce people to your brand and can be very affordable as a marketing tactic (as long as you have a well-defined funnel of how you’ll move them from passive video-watchers to customers).

Also, I would recommend captions since a lot of online videos are seen with sound off.

Good advice, Robert. It is true that many platforms play videos without audio on and the person has to manually turn it on. So adding captions is an important strategy.

The first thing I do when researching a new solution is watch their videos. If they don’t have any on their site, I search for them on YouTube. Companies that don’t have explainer or walk-through videos are really dropping the ball.

While hiring it done can result in more polished results, it is possible to make your own if need be. Test it out, and then you can expand to more professionally produced videos.

The more people use the internet on tiny smart phone screens, the more they will prefer video over reading. Many sites probably have very different audiences. Some business sites with long-form content will still have many desktop users with large monitors.

Entertainment sites may have shorter content with many videos. YouTube is, of course, almost all video. Desktop users like me do view a lot of video, but we can also read longer content. I don’t know that reading comprehensive posts like this one is feasible on a smartphone unless you carry a magnifying glass.

It is far easier and faster to understand products and online platforms when there is a video to show you how it works. The more complicated something is, the more videos are necessary.

If I go to a business site and they don’t have a video on their home page, the first thing I do is go to YouTube and search for one. Sometimes they’ll have one, but more often someone else will have created one.

For solutions I’m considering or writing about, the next thing I do is go to G2Crowd and read the reviews of others who have tested it. That is a great way to uncover pros and cons the brand hasn’t mentioned on their website.

Reading all the reviews and watching multiple videos makes it possible to narrow the potential choices down quickly before ever contacting the brands for more information.

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